When Life Becomes Death

I just finished reading a book from the New York Times best seller list.  The book is entitled, "When Breath Becomes Air."  It was written by Paul Kalanithi.  Paul was a 36 year old neurosurgeon who died of lung cancer on March 9, 2015 almost two months to the day before Diana died.  Like Diana, he had never smoked, and was first diagnosed in Stage IV of the disease.  

Reading his book was profoundly difficult for me, but also healing in a very real sense.  It helped me relive some of the joys and sorrows Diana and I experienced during her battle with cancer.  It made me appreciate how good God was to us during the course of Diana's illness, allowing us to enjoy many good days, probably  many more than Paul did in the course of his battle. It also helped me see Diana's courage, grace, faith and hope, qualities that were clearly present in Paul's life as he fought against cancer.  

Paul died before he had the opportunity to finish his book.  The epilogue was written by his wife, Lucy. She wrote beautifully of the final days of Paul's life.  It was as though I was sitting once again in the easy chair in my study, next to Diana's hospital bed, holding her hand during her final days.  One paragraph she wrote was particularly poignant to me.

"Although these last few years have been wrenching and difficult— sometimes almost impossible— they have also been the most beautiful and profound of my life, requiring the daily act of holding life and death, joy and pain in balance and exploring new depths of gratitude and love." (Kalanithi, Paul (2016-01-12). When Breath Becomes Air (p. 219). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.) 

I've written before that at a certain level I was thankful for Diana's cancer, because it brought us closer together than ever before.  I now realize that it was also a blessing in many other ways.  It gave me the opportunity to serve Diana more lovingly and selflessly than I had ever done before.  It allowed me to see her faith profoundly at work in a terribly difficult time.  It truly was a time of "holding life and death, joy and pain in balance."  It absolutely did allow me to "explore new depths of gratitude and love," in my relationship with both Diana and our Lord.

Reading Paul's book was a little bit like tearing the scab off a wound before it was ready to come off on its own. As I read, I remembered and I wept.  It brought all my pain to the forefront again.  I believe, however that in the end I will heal better for having read it.  I strongly recommend it to anyone who would like to wrestle with the issues of life and death.  The truth is, every single one of us is terminally ill from sin.  And none of us, not even those diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer knows exactly when or how we will die.  But when we have our faith and hope securely anchored in Jesus, in the reality of his life, death, and resurrection, then we can die well no matter when or how we die, because we know with certainty that we will live forever.